FF Bau

FF Bau is a large workhorse family of sans serif typefaces in the “Grotesk” genre. The design is from Christian Schwartz, inspired by the Grotesk types cast by the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipzig, Germany.

Schelter & Giesecke sold their Grotesks for many decades; they were first introduced around 1880. When the Bauhaus moved to the nearby city of Dessau in the mid-1920s, they chose these faces as the main selection for their printing shop, and used them for the vast majority of their classic experiments in asymmetrical typography.

In 1999, Erik Spiekermann asked Schwartz to consider drawing a revival of Schelter & Giesecke’s sans, updating the family for contemporary typographic needs without rationalizing away the spirit and warmth of the original. The Regular, Medium, and Bold are drawn directly from Schelter & Giesecke sources, and the Super weight was added for situations where subtlety would be inappropriate. The italics, too, are nowhere to be found in the original Schelter & Giesecke material, but their slight awkwardness seems to match well with the romans. The family was released in 2002 under the name FF Bau – something of homage to the most noted users of the original Schelter & Giesecke Grotesks.